You could try using Piecewise (ESC pw ESC). It doesn't look exactly the same though.
–
SzabolcsMar 11 '13 at 21:08

I know there is some such option -- something to do with "span" I think -- but I cannot find it now in Option Inspector. I even recall that somebody at WRI wrote to MathGroup about this several years ago.
–
murrayMar 11 '13 at 21:13

3

I found the option: SpanMaxSize. If you change its value from the default Automatic to Infinity, then the opening brace will be stretched so as to enclose all the rows of the table.
–
murrayMar 11 '13 at 21:56

1

@murray Your approach works very well when used in a Style wrapper for a FormBox containing the brace. This should be an answer.
–
JensMar 11 '13 at 23:40

@Jens: I didn't actually us a Style wrapper for a FormBox (I hate programming using boxes!) Rather, I used the option for the entire cell. For my purposes that sufficed, although I can envision others where it would be too crude an approach.
–
murrayMar 12 '13 at 4:18

select the Grid[...], and choose evaluate in place (from the context menu)

...and editing it holds the alignment specification to the "=" sign!

And for the slightly extra extension of the brackets:

It is also possible to simulate an align to different characters, although the only way I found is a little messier. There are invisible characters available in Mathematica. Be careful because they are... well... invisible. This means that you can mess things if they end up in the middle of computations... I'm going to demonstrate the technique with the esc am esc (aka \[AlignmentMarker]).

Another problem with this technique is that, since there is an invisible thing in the middle of the expression, the parser complains about it. So, I entered everything as strings (there's probably a better way of avoiding it). But, entering everything as string, brakes special characters formating during evaluation in place... But everything ends up working after editing it. Here is a way of doing:

I selected this as the answer because it seems to "kill two birds with one stone": to extend the brace and to align things on the equal sign. It even works to align on the equal sign when you have merely a series of equalities broken across lines (with nothing preceding the = on succeeding lines). However, it will not work if you have inequalities as well as qualities on the several lines; apparently Alignment won't let you specify more than a single character on which to align in a Grid. (I would love to be proved wrong here.)
–
murrayMar 12 '13 at 15:27

@murray I just added a way of aligning to different characters (not exactly true, but I think it gives what you want)
–
P. FonsecaMar 12 '13 at 20:26

All of these templates show some combination of delimiters that can be extended, either vertically or horizontally. To use the vertical unbalanced delimiters, you should normally first make sure that you're in a TraditionalForm environment so that the parser doesn't try to balance the brackets. This is based on my interpretation that you want to use these braces purely in typesetting and not as a function such as Piecewise.

As for the vertical alignment, a palette can also help with that. Have a look at the plain Row and Column templates in the Basic Math Assistant palette, for example.

Usage examples

Typesetting vertically stretched delimiters would realistically happen mostly in a DisplayFormula environment. This is what you see here (numbered equations):

To get these forms, just press the corresponding template button in the palette and then enter the column into the black square indicating the placeholder. Alternatively, highlight an existing column and press the button to apply the delimiters.

Likewise, you can do these things in a text cell by opening an inline cell as one always does for equations, and then proceeding as above:

This answer, like some others, requires what seems to be an inordinate amount of coding for what ought to be a simple, straightforward text-entry issue about very basic mathematical typesetting. (Makes one wonder how much the Mathematical front-end designers really know about mathematical typesetting.)
–
murrayMar 12 '13 at 15:30

Also, the alignment part of this answer won't handle the situation where you have some equalities and some inequalities. Any decent mathematical typesetting ought to allow alignment on characters that vary from one line to the next!
–
murrayMar 12 '13 at 17:23

That answer won't meet my needs in that it hard-codes the font size of the brace-- which means that magnifying the notebook won't work properly resize the brace.
–
murrayMar 12 '13 at 17:20

@murray Using magnifications should change the size of everything. Could you link an image of what you're seeing?
–
Mr.Wizard♦Mar 15 '13 at 0:57

As an alternative, you can try the following: instead of using FontSize -> 36 to size the brace, you can use SpanMinSize -> 2, which spans the brace to twice the font size. The resulting brace looks more appealing, but it may also not scale up in the way you wish. @murray
–
zentientMar 15 '13 at 8:07

@Mr.Wizard: You're correct, that changing the magnification does change the brace's size, too, even when the FontSize is hard-coded. However, if I switch from Working screen environment to Presentation screen environment, the brace does not stretch to enclose the full height of the lines.
–
murrayMar 15 '13 at 13:50

Mathematica is a registered trademark of Wolfram Research, Inc. While the mark is used herein with the limited permission of Wolfram Research, Stack Exchange and this site disclaim all affiliation therewith.